


bully coward victim

by what_is_a_social_life



Category: Angels in America - Kushner
Genre: Also killed off Prior sorry, Canonical Character Death, Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 07:39:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18361565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_is_a_social_life/pseuds/what_is_a_social_life
Summary: Roy Cohn’s name is put on the AIDS Remembrance Quilt.





	bully coward victim

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: I’m nowhere near talented enough to be associated with Tony Kushner in any way.
> 
> The text of the Hippocratic Oath I used is from Wikipedia, so apologies for inaccuracies. Totally messing with the timeline as well I think but hey. Inspired by a moment in The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America that describes how Roy’s name got on the World AIDS quilt.

Hannah finds out about it first. It’s been a dark couple weeks since Prior’s death. They’d all been caught by surprise, since he’d managed as long as he had, but then he’d gotten pneumonia again and his immune system just couldn’t shake it this time. It just wasn’t strong enough.

Louis thinks the quilt a great idea, which is weird to hear him say since it wasn’t his. Belize doesn’t have the heart to argue. Besides, Cleve Jones?  _ The _ Cleve Jones? He would not pass that up in a heartbeat.

They go make Prior a panel together and, in a way, it’s cathartic. Louis can’t sew to save his life, but Hannah can, and Belize himself is passable, so it works out. They do their best to make it every bit as fabulous as the man was in life. Louis even puts a rather crude stitching of Little Sheba in the corner, even though Prior had hated the damn cat.

Belize sees the outpouring of love going into creating this, everyone working through their grief in such a tangible way. It was a horrible way to go, he knows, because he’s watched it over and over again, first to a man he hated with a visceral loathing, and most recently, to a man he loved dearly. Not the way Louis had loved him all those years ago, but the way he had loved him when he died.

Roy Cohn hadn’t had that.

He’d been thinking a lot about Roy Cohn since he’d sat down with his family and started sewing. He thought about him every now and then, especially on the hard nights on which he had to watch another gay man slip away. He remembered Louis saying the Kaddish over this vile, vile man, one last act of mercy for a man who didn’t deserve it. As a nurse, he’d never taken the Hippocratic Oath, but he’d read it. Took it to heart anyways.

_ I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick. _

Roy Cohn had no one else to help him.

He finds himself stepping away. Grabbing new materials. Sewing. Every time someone looks towards him, he leans over the panel, hiding it. Everyone knows the name Roy Cohn. Everyone has an opinion on him.

Someone must have noticed because suddenly  _ the _ Cleve Jones is standing in front of him and he’s flipping the panel over, trying to hide it. This is  _ not _ how he wanted to meet one of his heros. Then again, he never expected to mourn Roy fucking Cohn.

“You know, if it’s going to be in the quilt, I’m going to have to see it, so why don’t you show it to me?”  _ the _ Cleve Jones said.

With a shaking hand, Belize flipped it over.

The name hadn’t been hard. He boxed it just so it looked better. He knew it needed more, though. He’d added the ACT UP triangle, just for color, but it looked wrong by itself. That triangle wasn’t Roy. What was?

The words had flowed right out, cut into fine little scraps on the table in front of him. Only the first had found its way onto the quilt so far.

“Did you actually know Roy Cohn?”  _ the _ Cleve Jones finally asked, eyes still glued to the word  _ bully _ staring back at them. Maybe it was time to stop referring to him as that. He was just another man standing in front of him. Another gay man fighting against the same things, trying to help the same people.

So Belize settles on replying, “Yes. I knew him  _ very well _ .” It sounds sexual, but really, how more intimate can you get than watching a man die? Even if he denied himself to his final breath? No one, not even bullies, not even cowards, deserves that.

“Fine.” And Cleve Jones walks away. Starts talking with Louis, of all people. Leaves Belize alone to continue his work. Their work. The point of this whole thing is to honor the fallen. To get others to see them as ordinary people who breathed and loved and lived.

He places the  _ coward _ over the ACT UP triangle.

And then puts  _ victim _ beside it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who comments/leaves kudos/bookmarks! Come yell at me on Tumblr @yetanotheremptypage


End file.
